Hunter Had Rocky Years With Baltimore Schools

Richard Hunter would rather be a superintendent than teach others how to do the job.

That's how the professor of education administration at the University of North Carolina became one of five finalists for the Orange County superintendent's job.

''I've spent most of my career in elementary and secondary education,'' Hunter said. ''That's where my heart is. I'm a kind of person who likes to be involved in doing, rather than philosophizing.''

Hunter was superintendent in Richmond, Va., for nine years and in Dayton, Ohio, for one year before taking a university teaching job.

In 1988, he returned to public school administration as superintendent of Baltimore City Schools. His three-year tenure there was rocky, Hunter and others agree.

Anthony V. Stewart, a former PTA president, said Hunter's rough start may have been due in part to his ''soft-spoken, laid-back'' style that contrasted with the strong personalities Baltimore was used to.

Hunter attributes his troubles to Baltimore politics. The school system with 108,000 students in 179 schools - is part of city government and its school board is appointed by the mayor.

''The school system is run just like the department of public works,'' he said.

Hunter's term was a fiscal success. He reduced the number of administrators in the central office and cut costs elsewhere as well.

''I inherited a huge deficit when I walked in,'' Hunter said. ''When I left, it was the first time in recent history the system had ended the year in the black and when I say recent history, I mean for 15 or 20 years.''

He also reduced the violence that plagued inner-city schools by increasing security. He changed the curriculum to include more instruction about non-white cultures in the mostly-black school district.

But he didn't have enough money to carry out other plans, said Lorretta Johnson, co-president of the Baltimore Teachers Union.

''The school system really needed money,'' Johnson said. ''When he wasn't able to get the kind of money out of the Legislature that he needed, he just felt he couldn't do his job.''

Hunter cites as one of his achievements the beginnings of school-based management, which gives more control over curriculum and finances to teachers and parents.

But Johnson said Hunter didn't appear committed to that concept, which teachers strongly supported.

''He was part of the obstacle,'' Johnson said. ''He didn't move, let alone fast enough, he didn't move at all.''

When one elementary school wanted to buy and adopt the curriculum of an upper-class private school, Hunter initially refused. He said it would have cost too much money and that others didn't think the curriculum was effective. But ultimately, the school was allowed to adopt the program.

''My staff recommended against the project and as I understood, the faculty also voted against the project,'' Hunter said.

Others involved in the school system said Hunter's efforts at school-based management were hurt by infighting among various groups of teachers, parents and other community leaders. Stewart, the former PTA president, said parents weren't involved in planning for school-based management until Hunter came to Baltimore.

''The entities that are supposed to be working together here in Baltimore aren't able to do that,'' Stewart said. ''I felt pretty comfortable with Dr. Hunter. He was pretty accommodating most of the time.''

Hunter said he still believes in giving teachers and parents at each school the ability to make decisions.

''I think the trend . . . is to down-size the central administration and to give schools more autonomy and authority to make decisions,'' he said.

In the end, controversy and politics led school commissioners to vote against renewing Hunter's contract, at the request of Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

''The mayor had made education his top priority and the mayor didn't deliver on all his promises and had to find someone to take the blame,'' Hunter said.

When Hunter criticized the mayor as he left Baltimore, Schmoke said the two had philosophical differences and that Hunter should have understood the city's political realities when he took the job.

The Rev. Arnold Howard of Baltimore's Enon Baptist Church was one of Hunter's supporters to the end.

''My impression of him was that he had a lot of good ideas,'' Howard said. ''My sense of it was that he never really was allowed to be the superintendent that I thought he could have been.''

Stewart also was sorry to see Hunter go.

''I just felt that a lot of things Dr. Hunter put in schools, he will never get credit for,'' Stewart said.